The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>It brings me back to the old days when I used to get excited about playing a game, it hasn't been since probably Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger that I remember feeling this way about a game.

Storywise: It is far more intensive than I previously thought it would be. The story also changes depending on the characters you have, who has died, and depending on what side missions you decide to take on the course of your adventure. There are A LOT of characters in this game, both evil, neutral, allied, and in your own military, every single one of them seems to play a part. The character development for such a large caste is done quite well, almost phenominally, I haven't seen a game that has done it this well in the past ever.

Gameplay, if you have played a strategy RPG in the past like Tactics Ogre, Shining Force, Final Fantasy Tactics, you will know the basics of these types of games. Essentially you can have many characters in a battle, and you may be fighting dozens. Oddly enough, the game seems to run by amazingly fast, and not slow paced like Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (which actually involves quite a bit fewer characters. I think the reason for this is that the gameplay seems to be much easier to control.

The map is two dimensional, different terrain offers different sorts of bonuses though, I've seen Forts, forests, plains, bridges, Castles, villages, hills, mountains, and probably others. There's also a rocks scissors paper system involved with fighting: Axes get bonuses over lances and spears, lances and spears over swords, and swords over axes; it just means that if you have an advantage over a weapon, then you have a greater chance of hitting, a greater chance of doing critical damage, and will do more damage per hit. It also works with magic, Light magic over dark magic over elemental magic (and back over light magic again). I am not really sure where archers fit in, but I do know that archers can do an incredible amount of damage to Pegasus Knights and other flying classes.

There are numerous different classes in the game, actually dozens, far more than any other strategy RPG I have played before. They depend on several things; firstly how advanced they are, you can upgrade units to advanced classes; and secondly from the region they are located (there are seven or eight different countries in the game, and each has its own set of character classes).

Weapons work like they do in the Final Fantasy Legend games, they can be used a certain amount of times, and then they break. You can buy new ones, but money is earned in unique ways: the two ways I have come accross with so far are A) by completeing some sort of mini mission within a chapter, B) by entering a village and talking to the locals, C) By fighting for it at the colleseum (oh yeah, you can be killed here so watch out!)

The major feature here is that when one of your characters die, they're dead, you can either continue on with the level, or restart the whole thing from the beginning, the game automatically saves every single move you make, so you can turn the game off at any point and continue from where you left off, but you can not take advantage of the system. When characters die, it will alter the story in some way, there are a few key characters who can't die though, if they are killed, it's game over automatically.

One feature I really like is the ability to set up a tent for weapon and supply storage, that way there is no need to worry greatly about weapon management. If a character needs a weapon or some other item, he/she doesn't have to seek out someone who has one, but rather just has to get it from the supply tent. Also, if a character has too many items and finds another, it will just automatically go to the supply tent (actually you have a choice, you can send it to the tent, or take it and send another item you already have to the tent).

Mostly all towns can be entered, and you can speak with the inhabitants who will tell you secrets, give advice, give gold, give items, give intelligence on the enemy, etc... By sitting in a Fort or a castle you can regenerate lost HP, there are also some units which also heal. A unit that is in danger of dying (because they are damaged, or weak and the enemiy is plentiful and easily capable of killing them) another unit can "rescue" them, which essentially will be picking up a person (hard to explain) so that they can not be hit or attacked, the rescuing unit can then carry the other one to safety and put them down.


In finishing: I'm not even half way through the game yet, but my general strategy is as follows:

I keep my best defended units at the front lines, and behind them I usually keep my units that have ranged weaponry or magic. To the sides and back I generally keep my lighter units, and use them generally as a clean-up crew to finish off the enemy before they have time to counter attack. I try not to expose my weaker units simply because they can be more easily killed. It all depends on the mission goals, and side quests. The enemy can take villages, so sometimes it is necessary to send out a strong party to get to the villages before the enemy does. Missions are all relatively different in goals, and often have quite a bit to do. I am not sure how long the game is yet, I have to finish it first, it will be MUCH longer for those who will reset a mission if a character is killed.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>It just forces you to play the game without ever losing one assuming losing characters negatively impacts the outcome (and it should).

I thought Light magic has priority over elemental magic, at least that's the way it was in the previous games. Light = Dark > all elemental, Fire > Wind > Lightning > Fire. Bows do critical damage to flying unit (or at least a very high % to critical). There are also special weapons that do critical damage to certain classes, like Iron Cutter, Knight Slayer, etc. FE favors a bit too much on the fast units that basically get hit 0% of the time so you can just charge with your Wind Mages and lightweight swordsman types in the front knowing nothing can ever hit them. It does a good job at developing the characters I guess with the dialogues... certainly better than most SRPGs. But after a while most of the battles get rather cumbersome because your 100% evade Wind Mages can pretty much chew anything up and it's an exercise in how to divide up the XP so that your Wind Mages aren't at level 30 while everyone's still at level 3 so you get a good XP rating.</div>